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“You don’t criticize the clock,” said the dwarf. “What, you think it responds to notices in the evening papers? To notes from some splenetic director? Let it be.” But he sounded confused himself.
“What’s it doing?” asked Yackle.
“A marionette in an alcove now,” said Brrr. He peered, squinted, to make sure he was getting it right. “With diamonds painted on his face.”
“Steady,” said Yackle, though whom she was addressing was unclear: maybe the marionette.
“Gone,” said Brrr. “This is awfully patchy.”
“You’re asking a lot of the Clock,” said the dwarf. “To make sense to both of you at once—not sure if it can handle the task—”
“Over here,” said Brrr, “get this. Another arcade.”
A red velvet curtain lifted, and a stage like a rounded dock slid forward on invisible rollers. The marionette with the blue diamonds on his face reappeared. The light strengthened enough so that one could see his fine rural tunic half slipped off his shoulder. His chest, though only a piece of polished poplar, managed to look sexy, the blue diamond tattoos circling around one nipple and then dropping in single file toward his abdomen. “It’s a man from the West, a Winkie I believe, in a costume suggesting money…”
But even Brrr’s voice caught in his throat, to see the door of a cupboard open and a figure painted green, dressed in the black skirts of a novice maunt, step through.
“It’s Elphaba, with the Winkie prince,” said Brrr. “Couldn’t be anyone else.”
“No,” said Ilianora. “The Clock wouldn’t dare. I don’t buy it.”
Yackle kept her chin trained straight at the little stage as if she could tell exactly where it was, and what it must be showing. She gripped Ilianora’s hand hard. “Steady, steady, steady,” said the older woman to the younger.
“He’s her lover,” said Brrr. “The Witch’s lover. Did she have a lover? Or is this propaganda?”
The dwarf didn’t answer. He seemed just as captivated as they.
The embrace was brief and, if you could credit such a thing between figures of painted wood and cloth, passionate. Then Elphaba whipped away offstage, and the lights went half down. They were beginning to come up elsewhere, on a lower section, a grid of iron behind which something was beginning to happen: a huge golden fish, a carp or something, floating…. But Brrr’s eye was caught by a flash of movement on the darkened deck, and he whistled. “Something else up there—look!”
The puppet of the Winkie prince had gone into a slump, perhaps a kind of postcoital doze, when a figure up on top of the wardrobe appeared. It was a funny little white pincushion sewn over with small mirrors that caught the limited light.
Brrr said, “A little star up there? A small overweight star spying from the wardrobe?” But the bright lumpy thing leaped down with an undeniably feline agility, and stalked on stiff little furry legs to the sleeping lover. The creature sniffed the man up and down, from his soft breathing nostrils to his groin.
Brrr found himself holding his breath.
As if to protect Shadowpuppet, he reached down and snatched up the glass cat, turning its head from the entertainment. But no cat, glass or otherwise, yields to this sort of command, and it squirmed its neck about so its glassy eyes could follow the movements on the stage.
“Powerful entertainment. My little critter’s rapt,” he said, as much to himself as to the others.
The white cat in the tableau ran to a doorway at the rear of the stage, and mewed—three harsh mews, cut off, more like words. Not so much “meow” as “now—now—now!”
Several bits of shadow, with masks and cudgels, shaped themselves into more or less human form, and they surged forward, four, five of them—the sleeping man woke, and cried out twice—and then the cudgels were upon him. The toy blood realistically sprayed the stage. The puppet cat watched, and then licked the blood off its mirrors.
The glass cat in Brrr’s arms began to squirm. Brrr held it more tightly. It protested with meows like insults.
“Now, settle down, you,” said Brrr. “Don’t want you running away and hiding just when we’re getting ready to fold up shop here and skedaddle. Can’t imagine either army would treat you as well as I do.”
“You oaf,” cried Shadowpuppet. “I can’t breathe.”
“What in tarnation’s corner!” Brrr thrust Shadowpuppet away, as if it were possessed, but caught himself from dashing it to the ground. He barked at the dwarf, “My only comfort, my pet, and you paint it a small villain? Is this how you catch your audiences, sowing discord and suspicion among them?”
“Don’t look at me,” said the sergeant-at-hand. “I’m staff, not management.”
“And you—” Brrr winced at the wriggling thing. “You suddenly borrow enough language to lodge a complaint mightier than a meow? Have you been enchanted by this, this puppet play—or are you smoked out by it?”
“You!” said Ilianora. “You were an informer on Elphaba and—and—” She nearly couldn’t say his name. “And Fiyero? You?” She grabbed Shadowpuppet from Brrr and squeezed it so hard its tail broke off, and splintered upon the cobbles.
The glass cat—was it a Cat?—reared and shot its claws. Ilianora, weeping, flinched away and flung the Cat on the ground. It didn’t shatter, but a front leg bent laterally in an unnatural way, as if the Cat had taught its forearm how to cast a shuttle across a loom. It sat there and just managed to crane around enough to lick the blood from the stump of the severed tail. The blood was thin and brown, like shit water.
